


Midnight Visitor

by Sholio



Category: White Collar
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 17:28:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5635561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing scene for 2x08, after Peter is poisoned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midnight Visitor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pechika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pechika/gifts).



By the time Peter got to the hospital, he was breathing easier and his heart no longer felt like it was trying to pound its way out of his chest, but he was still exhausted, with a heavy leaden feeling weighing down his limbs. Everything ached. He wasn't sure if that was the poison, the heart attack, or the fact that they'd literally _restarted his heart._ Either way, he felt like crap, and all he wanted to do was crawl into a bed and sleep for a year.

Instead, he endured a whole battery of tests, trying to determine whether there was damage to his heart and if he was in any immediate danger. Elizabeth showed up halfway through. Peter didn't know she was there until he came out of the MRI machine and found her hovering, eyes bright with unshed tears.

"Oh, Peter," she said, and flung her arms around him.

He awkwardly patted her back. "I'm okay, hon."

Elizabeth pulled back, dabbing at her eyes. "That is _not_ what they told me."

"Oh, you know how it can be," Peter said. "Sounds worse when you lay it all out, you know?" He tried very hard not to think about the feeling of pressure in his chest, the world collapsing inward on him and blackness closing in from the edges of his vision.

"Peter Burke, you're white as a sheet. Don't try pretending that you're fine."

"But I am," he insisted. "Or, I will be. Soon."

They released him back to a room while the results of his many scans were processed, and he was okayed to eat something. Elizabeth hung out with him in the room, touching him a lot -- little casual touches, as if to ensure herself that he was still there, still with her.

"I'm okay, hon," he said for the tenth or eleventh time.

"Peter, you had a heart attack. Someone _poisoned_ you." She got up and wandered to the window, gazing out at the city lights. "I thought when you went to work for White Collar ... I thought this wouldn't be a problem."

"It's always going to be part of the job," he pointed out. "It's just not likely. This was a fluke. And, look, I'm --"

"-- Okay. Yes. I know you're okay. This time."

"C'mere." He held out an arm. She came over and curled up with him on the hospital bed.

"Please take care of yourself," she whispered into his neck.

"I will. Hon, I swear. I'm as careful as I can be. And I have people looking out for me. Diana, Jones ..."

"Neal," she said quietly. "From what I hear."

"Neal," he agreed. "Guardian angel with a tracking anklet."

Elizabeth laughed, and rested her head on his shoulder. "Just ... _please_ be careful."

He didn't answer, didn't really have an answer for her; just rocked her quietly, until the doctor came in to discuss his test results. All the scans were coming back clean, but they wanted to keep him overnight to make sure there were no rhythm abnormalities in his heart before they let him go.

With some effort, he talked Elizabeth out of spending the night at the hospital. There was no point; he'd be well taken care of, he wasn't in danger, and she may as well spend the night in her own bed.

"My cold, lonely bed," she said sadly, and kissed him goodbye.

"I'll be back in the morning, good as new."

"Yes you will." She gave him a final soft kiss, and left, with a longing backward glance.

Then it was just Peter and a lonely hospital room. He occupied himself with his phone, getting caught up on numerous emails from Diana and Jones catching up up on the status of the case. By the time he'd finished a long back-and-forth with Diana wrapping up details at Novice, it was late. _Get some sleep,_ he told her, and firmly put the phone aside, telling himself the same thing.

But he couldn't sleep. Every time he tried, he jolted awake, haunted by the breathless squeezing feeling in his chest. Memory, he told himself; memory couldn't hurt him, and he was hooked up to monitors that showed him a reassuring, steady, normal pulse beat. Of course, the monitors didn't help with his insomnia, since they made it hard to roll over with the glue of the electrodes tugging at his skin.

Maybe he could take them off and go for a walk. Would the nurses object to that? Probably, he thought gloomily. He was exhausted, but wide awake. 

Finally he reached for his phone, deciding to see how much of his necessary paperwork and correspondence for the case it was possible to do on the tiny screen, when a sixth sense alerted him that he wasn't alone.

He went very still. The door to his hospital room was out of sight from his bed, hidden by the closet and bathroom, but he could hear the soft whisper as it opened inward, very slowly and stealthily. The nurses wouldn't have bothered to be that quiet. They'd been coming in to check his vitals regularly, and they never made _that_ much effort to conceal their presence.

Silently as possible, he sat up and put his bare feet to the floor. Where was his gun? No, he didn't have it, did he? The only weapon handy was the chair by the bed. Peter grasped it, trying to think who in the case had been left as a loose end. Was there something he'd overlooked? Someone still at large --

A shadowy figure came around the corner into the dim room. Peter swept the chair off the ground, and found himself staring at Neal, a shadowy shape in a fedora with his light eyes glittering under the hat brim.

Peter heaved a sigh and set the chair back on the floor with a clunk.

"Possibly I should have knocked," Neal said after a moment. "I didn't want to wake you up."

"Isn't this hospital outside your radius? Neal, so help me, if you slipped your anklet just to come see me in the hospital --"

"No, no," Neal said hastily. "My anklet's still set to roaming status, like it normally is when I'm at work. With all the excitement this evening, nobody set it back."

Peter decided not to ask through what experimental process, exactly, Neal had figured this out. And he also didn't ask where else Neal had been tonight. Neal had saved his life that day. Maybe a night of unexpected freedom was exactly what he deserved.

Not that Peter wouldn't be taking a peek at Neal's tracking data later, though. Just to check.

In the meantime, he rested his elbows on his knees. "Not that I'm not flattered, but it's after visiting hours, which means you almost certainly got into this hospital under false pretenses. Notice I'm not saying _broke_ in; I'm sure you were very careful not to break anything."

There was a quick flash of a smile. "Nothing broken," Neal reassured him. "I just ... I wasn't going to ..." He hesitated.

"You were going to sneak in, watch me sleep, and then leave," Peter said, light dawning. It was after midnight; Neal couldn't have expected him to be awake.

"Thus avoiding awkward conversations," Neal said. "Such as this one."

"Yes, well, as you can see, I'm ..." He was going to say _fine._ Somehow it wouldn't quite come out. Odd, he thought, that it was easier to lie to his wife than to Neal; how had _that_ happened? But of course, Neal had been there; Neal had seen him fall, and watched the paramedics working to recuscitate him.

"... awake," Neal finished his sentence, when he didn't.

"Yes," Peter said. "I am definitely that. Even more so now, thanks to you."

Neal took off his hat and turned it over in his hands. "Uh, sorry."

"It's all right. You weren't _trying_ to scare me into --" _A heart attack,_ he'd almost said, but that wasn't funny anymore. At least, not right now.

"Yeah, no, just checking in," Neal said. He spun the hat and plunked it back onto his head. "Are you going to sleep now? Because ... I can leave."

He was tempted to encourage this, except then he thought about lying awake, staring at the ceiling, possibly for hours ... "Neal?" he said, as Neal turned away.

Neal looked back. "Yeah?"

And then he wasn't sure what he wanted to say. Asking Neal to stay to entertain him through his insomnia was ... ridiculous, and probably just going to be awkward for both of them. "I was going to ask if you could run down to the nurse's station and see if they have coffee," he said. "But that wouldn't be any help at all with falling asleep, and they're probably not going to let me have caffeine anyway, so, uh ... could you check and see what they have that isn't caffeinated?"

Neal's eyebrows went up, thin dark slashes in the dim light of the glowing readouts over the bed. "No caffeine," he said. "Got it."

After he'd left, Peter snapped on the light beside the bed. No telling if Neal was even coming back, but he definitely wasn't falling asleep _now._

Neal did in fact come back, some five minutes later, carrying a steaming cup. "Hot cocoa," he said, and wrinkled his nose. "From a mix."

"That's exactly how we used to make it when I was a kid, after a long day of sledding." Nostalgia washed over him, and he held out a hand. "Thanks."

Neal handed the cup to him. "You know, I even managed to get it without being seen. Which is tricky when you're trying to stir a packet of cocoa mix into boiling water."

"Oh. Right. Visiting hours." He'd forgotten, for the moment, that Neal wasn't supposed to be here. The brief, incongruous image of Neal using his cat-burglar skills to sneak around and mix a cup of hot cocoa made him choke in an attempt to stifle a laugh. "You should probably go before you get in trouble. And get some sleep. I still don't know if I'll be in to work tomorrow, but you definitely will."

Neal half-smiled. His mouth opened and closed as if he wanted to say something, and then a distant expression crossed his face, and he shut down. Something was bothering him, but Peter had learned from long experience that it wasn't possible to force him to talk about things. He'd talk about it, or he wouldn't, in his own time.

Instead, Peter waited long enough that Neal said, "Good night, Peter," and turned away.

"Neal?"

Neal turned back, his face revealing a quick flash of curiosity.

"Thanks," Peter said quietly. "And I don't mean for the cocoa."

Neal's quick, sideways smile was soft and fond and a little shy. Then he was gone, the only sign of his passage the soft whisper of the door.

Peter sighed and pulled the blanket up over him, then rolled over and snapped off the light. His hand brushed the hot cup, and he took a small sip. It tasted like childhood, a quick warm flash of nostalgia for things long gone.

He hoped Neal got out of the hospital without getting caught, but knowing Neal, he certainly would.

After a while, Peter drifted; and in time, he slept, with a hand still resting lightly against the cup on the bedside table.


End file.
